40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 25

Episode Date: September 9, 2015

Chad, Daniel and Brandon discuss Lot, Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham's prayer. Have a listen.

Thank you. somebody to help us manage it, to get it out on time, and to keep the quality high. If these resources have been helpful to you, please consider going to Christ Hold Fast and clicking on the support page. There you can make a one-time donation or a reoccurring donation of any size. This will help us meet our goals of being able to bring someone on staff. Everyone at Christ Hold Fast would greatly appreciate your support. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. Thank you for joining us again.

I am Daniel Henry Price, and I am joined by Chad Bird and Brandon Hanson. How are you guys doing? Hey, we're good. We're good. Glad to be back. Yeah, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever it is there. Yes. Real quick note, if you are listening to this and you have not been over to christholdfast.org and if you haven't went there and then navigated yourself to the conference page

and then in doing so haven't clicked that register button, you should probably shut this down and do that and then come back to this. or you could listen to this while you register for the conference and that would be the best of all things. I would recommend you do that. So go check that out because all three of us, in fact,

will be doing different things at that event. And so I know Chad, he really wants you guys to come. I do. We got these early bird devotions with Chad Bird. You got to be there. Cup of coffee in hand whether you're awake

or sleep it doesn't matter you need to be there yeah and it won't be just us we're small potatoes on this whole event uh we've got a ridiculous list of uh of speakers who have uh agreed to come out and are excited to participate so you can go check out that list you can register there you can see what exactly is going to be going on lots of people that we've had on the crystal Fastcast are going to be there, and so check that out. Chad, where are we in this whole Old Testament journey? Well, last time we left off with laughter, the laughter story in Genesis 18, and we're going to pick up today with a story that doesn't have laughter in it, that's not humorous.

But we're about halfway through chapter 18 of Genesis, and we're going to transition to the whole story about Sodom and Gomorrah today. That's where this account begins. We've got the last half of chapter 18, and then we have all the chapter 19 that are concerned with this story. So we'll probably be here for at least a couple of episodes. But last time, just to kind of provide the context here, we talked about when these three mysterious visitors came to Abraham and Sarah's tent when they were camped there at the Oaks of Mamre. And this is the final announcement, the definitive announcement that Sarah is going to have a son and that his name will be Isaac. We've had this promise for the last 25 years reiterated multiple times. But finally, the Lord actually appears along with two angels and they have a meal with Abraham and they promise Abraham that he's going to come back.

The Lord is going to come back the same time next year and Sarah will have a child. And when Sarah hears it, she's eavesdropping in the tent behind the men. When she hears it, she laughs because the promise seems so outrageous, so comical, so hilarious because she's 90 years old that she laughs in kind of a combination of unbelief and delight all at the same time. And so that's where we stopped last time, Genesis 18, 15. So we'll move on from there if you guys are ready. Dude, I'm ready. All right, let's do it. Brandon, he looks ready.

Brandon is ready. He looks ready. Locked, tucked, and ready to go. I can see anticipation all over his face. I'm always ready for Sodom and Gomorrah. Let's do it. All right, let's go. All right, so here's what happened next.

We leave off from the whole camp and the laughter scene, and we pick up with the story in verse 16. It says the men talking about the these three mysterious men, one of whom was the Lord. The men rose up from there and they they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham was walking with them to send them off. And God poses this question, just kind of a thinking out loud kind of question. He says, shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? since Abraham will become a great and mighty nation and in him all the nations of the earth

will be blessed. And he goes on to talk about how he's chosen Abraham, that Abraham may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. So God poses this question. He reflects upon the fact that he's chosen Abraham. Abraham is going to be the one through whom the promised seed will come. And in asking the question in this way, of course, the Lord gives his own answer. Yes. Yes, he will. He will disclose to Abraham what he's about to do. Now, the question, as I was reading this and pondering upon the Lord's question, the question I ask myself is, why does God speak in this way?

Why does he say, shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? What he's about to do, of course, is to announce an impending destruction upon Sodom and Gomorrah. So why would the Lord not hide? Why would he disclose what he's about to do to Abraham? Lot is evidently very important to Abraham. Lot is the son of Abraham's deceased brother So Abraham has more or less adopted Lot as his own son When he leaves his home country, he takes Lot with him

So Lot and Sarah and Abraham all make this journey And even though they separate at one point Because their herdsmen were at odds with each other Because there wasn't enough land And Abraham has remained faithful to Lot through all these years. In fact, I want to talk about this in just a minute. You know, there's a point where Abraham actually rescues Lot after he's been kidnapped. So, yeah, Lot is loved by Abraham.

He's his nephew, sort of his adopted son. And so because of that, God wants to let Abraham know, hey, this is what's about to happen. and uh lot is down there so i'm going to inform you of of my plan um i i wonder too and and maybe this is speculation but i wonder too if this is something of a test for abraham if god is disclosing this to abraham to see how abraham reacts will abraham simply accept this decreed judgment of God, or will he act in a way that is in concert with mercy and grace and concern for others? In other words, when God tells Abraham this, will Abraham simply stand aside and say, all right, you know, it's what you want to do,

we'll blow them to smithereens or will abraham actually stand in front of god and act as an intercessor will he uh will he plead for mercy not just for lot but for for the entire for the entire city yeah that that is one thing that well we haven't got there yet but that will play out is He doesn't just fight for Lot Or try to persuade God For the sake of Lot alone But for the sake of whoever is there That could be worth saving

And maybe perhaps in Abraham's mind As a pretty ranked sinner himself Sinners happen to I've noticed this Abraham has got himself a record people with records are a little sympathetic to other people with records and uh they some they sometimes will uh go and uh take up their uh cause try to see if they can uh garner them some mercy and this is a this is a regular thing within within scripture just within life where a dude

that has not come to grips with his own record and sort of his own failure. He's not interested in mercy at all. And that's usually how it goes. You know, I'm not going to Nineveh. No, I'm not doing that because I'm a pretty righteous dude. And I mean, those people deserve what they get. But you see people that have like really ate it

sometimes are a little more soft. Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons that the Lord allows us to have these downfalls, to experience being broken, is because it does seem to work that way. that the more that a person is aware of their own sinfulness and depravity, the more they are aware of, even if others are not, the more that they themselves are aware of their own weaknesses and failings and the temptations to which they have succumbed. Generally speaking, the much more mercy they're going to have on those who are in the same situation.

whereas the the higher opinion i have of myself the lower opinion i'm going to have of of other people and abraham like you say he's got a he's got a history he's got a his resume his resume is is not spotless he uh well way back in chapter 12 when we first started talking about him he basically uh used his wife as a as a means whereby to save his own life you know he hands her over more or less to the egyptians and she ends up caught in a situation of adultery just so that abraham can spare his own life so he he uh he's got his he's got his problems and that's probably one of the reasons why he's wanting to act in in in as a merciful intercessor for for sodom and gomorrah yeah there's nothing like god saying to abraham so abraham there's a lot of

sexual immorality going on down there in Sodom. I was thinking about destroying the whole thing. What do you think? Is that what we do with sexual immorality? Is that what happens? Yeah. His response,

the way that he, and this is probably, at least in my eyes, the most incredible prayer in the Scriptures. that's why he he begins to pray the way the way he does so let's let's get to that let's get to that prayer just a minute before we do though there is a there is a couple of verses here that I think are are worthy of note this is I'm looking at verse 20 now it says the Lord said the outcry

of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to me, and if not, I will know. This is the second time in Genesis that we've heard about how bad a place Sodom and Gomorrah is. We heard about it first, actually, all the way back in chapter 13. I'm looking at chapter 13, verse 13. It says, Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord. And that's all it tells us. And now we hear, all the way here in chapter 18, that the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. But all we have right now are these kind of general pronouncements of the wicked nature of the people of Sodom

without any specifics whatsoever. We're going to find out as the story goes on at least one example of that sinfulness or of that wickedness, but I think I'm going to save discussion of that until we actually get to that, get to that point. So we have the Lord saying that, and then he says he's going to go down and find out if the report is true. Then kind of have a shift, shift in the narrative. It says, remember there were these three, these three men, which at least I think are the lord and two angels it says the men turned away from there and went towards sodom while abraham was still standing before the lord so now we got this split that takes place we got these two uh so-called men that uh what we call angels at the beginning of of chapter 19. they

They go on this mission to Sodom and Gomorrah while the Lord stays behind with Abraham. And this is when we begin to have this long petition, intercession by Abraham. He starts out with a question himself. The Lord had asked, shall I indeed hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? And so Abraham, once he's heard, he has a question of his own. He says, will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there's 50 righteous within the city. Will you sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the 50 righteous who are in it?

Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike, far be it from you, shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly. So what do you think Abraham is up to? And this is just the beginning of the prayer, but what are some of the assumptions that Abraham makes about God that are the basis of his intercession for the city of Sodom? God is just. That perhaps God sees a difference in men between righteousness and wickedness. I think it's pretty obvious that Abraham, being an unrighteous man himself,

who is in fact righteous does have a pretty good uh grasp on the concept of alien righteousness uh so i don't think he's i don't think he's in any way saying what if there's some dudes that are not sinners down there with those dudes that are sinners what if what if that's the case uh i don't think i don't think he's making that that argument but i do think he's saying what if there's what if there are men of faith uh what if what if there what if there are some of those down there but if there's some men like me down there i certainly don't think he's uh he's arguing for a righteousness uh of your own and what about those guys down there he surely knows better at this point in his own life and and only then can he appeal to the the justice of god

because clearly he would know that, well, God has destroyed all of creation once before. And so he's appealing to something else besides that. Yeah, I think it would be helpful to reflect upon the fact that there's two kinds of righteousness that the scriptures often talk about. And you can think of these in terms of horizontal righteousness and vertical righteousness. Horizontal righteousness is kind of the righteousness that we see when we're looking at others. Like, you know, I might know a guy and I say, you know, he's a good person. He's a righteous person.

He is active in loving his neighbors. so that's the the horizontal horizontal righteousness which of course differs from from person to person uh everybody's everybody's unique in that in that respect but that has nothing to do with the other kind of righteousness and that is the vertical righteousness the vertical righteousness is that which god gives to us from jesus christ it's the righteousness which he declares to us imputes to us gives to us so that it's an alien righteousness like you mentioned earlier dan alien in the sense that it's not ours it's the righteousness of christ which god the father gives to us by grace and this righteousness is a perfect righteousness it's that which we

receive which we receive by faith if you look at lot's life and spoiler alert here for anybody who hasn't seen this movie yet. I think of Genesis as a movie now. Lot is not the most righteous guy on the face of the earth. I mean, maybe we don't know so much about him yet, but it turns out that he has some pretty inappropriate relationships with his daughters just after this, not too long after this. So he definitely is not saved because of his horizontal righteousness or some righteousness within him so i guess i would like to go back and amend what i said i wasn't thinking quite clearly there it could have sounded incorrect there but i guess kind of what i i think one of the presuppositions that uh abraham is approaching god here with then is that god is

both just and the justifier of the ungodly um and uh and it is that alien righteousness that he's uh hoping god is uh seen there through faith what's what's wild is and we'll get there obviously is that in the new in the new testament you do have lot you have peter talking about lot and uh and he says his his righteous soul and you're like okay well i that's weird because uh i see like basically zero things in lot's life that are righteous like no joke there's not a lot in scripture about lot and like none of it is like something that you'd be like that is righteous look at that righteousness like not one freaking thing man like that if peter didn't say lot was righteous it would be like church history would probably be like oh no lots burning in hell for

sure yeah i i i'll be completely honest here i i really don't i really don't get that uh that section of second peter it says that uh yeah it talks about righteous lot he was oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men for by what he saw and heard that righteous man while living among them felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds it doesn't read like that does it no i and i don't and i don't mean to come across as if i'm denying this or contradicting this i'm just simply being quite honest and that uh i i i have a hard time i guess understanding where peter is is coming from uh simply because if you if you read the narrative if you read genesis 18 and 19 uh lot comes out as as pretty much of a of a jerk and uh he's

he doesn't in fact he doesn't even want to leave sodom even after everything that happens during this horrific night uh and the angels are telling him god's going to destroy the city he delays there's this one one verse in chapter 19 where it says lot tarrys or he dawdles and so the angels basically have to drag him out of the city yeah uh and he chose to live there it's not like he was you know kept there he he chose to live in sodom i think it's a i think it's an example of uh i think you got you got some symbol going on and uh this is and here's the the fact is you can be up to your eyeballs and sin and be intentionally up to your eyeballs and say you can move to sodom you pitch your tent near sodom that's what lot does you can you can straight up

build your house in the town square and uh you can do all those things and there can be part of you that is miserable the whole time uh and that's and that's just the way that's just the way of it listen and everything on the outside everything externally is as you write if someone was to write it down would say this guy's he's loving it he's doing it on purpose uh he's he's there by his own choosing this guy's this guy's a dirtbag but apparently uh so it is with lot there there was at least something and in this case peter calls it that his righteous soul and and we know for sure we're talking about alien righteousness here because there ain't any there's no there's no horizontal righteousness going on here that there's that that thing in him

that new man in him which apparently is there for lot is uh is tormented and miserable the whole time but the old man is uh quite happy and quite content and uh at that in this instance in sodom and gomorrah that old man has uh has his little time of victory as uh as lot pitches his tent in sodom and and hangs out there decides he's gonna raise his family in this horrible place and he's gonna try to he's dilly-dallying with the angels and you know this this uh you can sin is a crazy thing you can um you can do all kinds of things and and continue doing all kinds of things and just be absolutely miserable at the same time you can be i mean like the the symbol the struggle is real y'all all right like like you can be like loving it and hating it at the same time this

what paul talks about that you could be loving living in sodom and hate living in sodom at the same exact time yeah i think that's the that's the contradiction that we all live with and day to day hour to hour uh you know it uh it changes uh sometimes we're miserable sometimes we're loving it and sometimes it's it's it's all happening it's all happening at once all right So maybe Lot is, maybe we're much more like Lot than we would ever care to admit. There's a reason why the scriptures go on to use Sodom as kind of an emblem of the world, not of the, you know, one segment of the world, some sin city or some extremely wicked country, but as as the world because that's that's where we live we're we're in sodom and uh we're we're

sojourners just like lot was actually because our our country is is is elsewhere but we're still living here we're still surrounded by people that are uh people that uh that are gonna draw us into into wickedness and we we struggle with the wickedness that's that's within us yep we've jumped way ahead of ourselves here i think we have yeah yeah that was we did need to give a spoiler alert for those who haven't who haven't seen this movie so that's fine that's good uh yeah we uh we're not uh we're not restricted to a linear approach here we can jump ahead so uh i guess let's talk a little bit more about this about this prayer uh abraham starts out by saying, hey, look, God, you're just, you're righteous, and I know that you're not going

to simply sweep away the righteous. So suppose there's 50 righteous people in the city. And God responds. He says, if I find in Sodom 50 righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account now speaking personally here if if i would have had the the audacity to uh to intercede in this way with god i probably would have stopped there because i know myself i was like okay well maybe there'll be 50 there but but abraham doesn't this is actually only only the beginning he uh he goes on he uh he says well this is verse 27 uh look i i've ventured to speak to the lord although i am but dust and ashes suppose the 50 righteous are lacking five will you destroy the whole city because of five and god said i will

not destroy it if i find 45 there and then he goes on he says uh abraham spoke to him yet again he says, well, suppose 40 are found there. And once more, God says, I won't do it on account of the 40. And Abraham's still not finished. He says, oh, may the Lord not be angry, and I will speak. Suppose 30 are found there. And he says, I won't do it if I find 30 there. And still Abraham goes on. He says, behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord. Suppose 20 are found there. God says, i won't destroy it on account of the 20 and then finally finally abraham says oh may the lord not be angry and i shall speak only this once suppose 10 are found there and he said i will not destroy it on account of the 10 what do you think this tells us about prayer abraham is approaching this

in a in a very uh uh it's it's humble it kind of reminds me of um the first part of romans 2 where it says uh do not not not presuming on the riches and kindness and forbearance of god his patience and i think abraham here is what he's doing is he's he's not presuming on it But he's testing the mercy of God. He's testing God's patience. How far can I push this? How deep and wide, how great is the depth and breadth of God's mercy here? I'll tread carefully here.

He knows that there's not too many righteous people down there. There's not too many people of faith. And he wants to get down to the lowest denominator possible. But he also realizes he's in the presence of the Lord Almighty, the creator of the heavens and the earth. And it's not a good thing to just simply assume things about God that you don't know for certain. Yeah, there's almost like a combination of audacity and humility, both in this prayer. I mean, more than once, he says something which acknowledges his own lowliness, his own unworthiness to say what he's saying. Early on, he says, you know, I am but dust and ashes, so I'm nothing.

You know, I'm not approaching you because I'm righteous. I'm not approaching you because I have some sort of pull with you. All I am is dust and ashes. and he asked god more than once you know don't get mad don't get angry so there's this there's this uh acknowledgement of uh of his of his unworthiness to to speak to god but combined with that is this boldness this audacity in prayer to go on and on and to push the envelope farther and farther until he finally gets to 10 righteous people. It's an awesome truth that the throne of grace is this kind of place

that even dust and ashes may approach it boldly, which says something about God. That when you're approaching the grace of God, uh though you be just dust and ashes and that's certainly true that that even dust and ashes can approach that that throne with some boldness boldness is not the uh opposite of humility uh that would be that would be pride uh he's not he's not a he's not approaching it pridefully at all but he's approaching it boldly because while he doesn't know everything about god He certainly has lived long enough, ate crap enough times to know that this is true of God, that the throne of grace is a place that he can safely go and he can have some measure of boldness in approaching it.

He's been there before, and Abraham is no stranger to the grace of God. And so he has a humble confidence in walking up to that throne and saying, I have a request that I would make upon the grace of God. And though dust and ashes I be, I know that this is a safe place for me to make that request. which says something awesome about God. Yeah, if anyone knows that God is a merciful God, it's Abraham. And it's exclusively upon the knowledge of that mercy that Abraham is able to say what he does.

He doesn't approach him saying, you owe this to me. He doesn't approach him saying, because I'm righteous, I expect you to listen to me. He approaches him because he knows that he's a gracious and merciful God. You could almost make the claim that every psalm that's written in some way is inspired by this dialogue between Abraham and the Lord. Because the psalms are full of brutally honest prayers in which people take God to task. They call upon him in complete humility, but also complete confidence that he will hear them, even when they say seemingly outlandish things. They're honest in their prayers.

They don't feel like they have to, in some way, make excuses because they trust that he is a merciful and a gracious father, which is the the confidence that we have as as we approach god's son of grace too you know if if god was willing to look upon this world in mercy to send his son to live the life that he did to suffer at the hands of men to be crucified to to endure this ignominious death on our behalf and to be buried and to be raised to life again, if God is so merciful as to do all of this for us, despite the fact that we didn't even want it, much less deserve it, then certainly he is going to be merciful and gracious

in listening to us as we talk to him and accepting our prayers as prayers which are coming to him through the sacrifice of Christ and are heard and are answered by him. That's the means by which we approach prayer today. The same thing that Abraham had way back in Genesis 18. Can I just bring up another thing? I just thought of this, and this goes all the way back almost to the beginning of the passage here,

but it kind of encompasses this whole thing here as God's two words of law and gospel. Another way to talk about them is God's proper word and God's alien word, that his proper word is his word of provision, of protection, of care, of love and mercy, and of promise, promise for future hope. The word of Christ and the promises is the way that the confessions talk about it. And it's shorthand is the gospel. So we've got law and gospel here. And I think when I'm going to go back and answer your first question, what is God doing here when he's asking, shall I hide from Abraham? What I am about to do since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation.

And in him, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Why would God ask this? I'm going to venture to say that he's wrestling within himself, that this is an alien word he's about to pronounce. a word of judgment. It's not God's proper word to judge his creation, which he first called very good, and which has, of course, since fallen into sin and depravity, but it's something that must be done, and it's something that God doesn't turn away from doing, but I think he wants to, I think we see here the heart of God that it is not his, it is not the word that he prefers to speak here this word of judgment that he's about to pronounce it's that alien word it's that word

that is not natural for God to speak the way that he created natural order and and this good and great creation that as it originally was and the interesting thing here is it seems that Abraham is falling back on the promises of God that he's a merciful God and God mentions them here he says you know for I have chosen him so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the lord may bring upon abraham what he has spoken about him which is that becoming a great and mighty nation so that in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed and there's this tension here that we can't just let go slack or cut the line and and uh and go well we're just going to ignore god's

one word or the other word and focus on on just this one um i i kind of i kind of see that at play here is this alien word and the the word of promise the proper word that god speaks i uh i that's fantastic i think it's a great i think it's a great insight and i would uh i would echo i would echo the same and uh and i think unfortunately we're gonna have to let uh that be the last word because i think we're out of time this is this is true this is true i think that uh that's it that's a great point i think that there's no way to pray where where you're not uh you're not appeal appealing to the mercies of god even if you're uh you might be asking for judgment but just the fact that you're praying just the fact that you are talking to god

uh at all is uh on some level uh done with the understanding that he's not going to like strike you dead for it just just the very the very words of the lord's prayer to be at the very beginning when you say our father you're acknowledging something uh the fact that you can even say that is uh is an act of mercy every every prayer is a confession that god is is uh god is a god of love yep alright well guys go back over to chryslefast.org check out the conference

check out all the other stuff we got going on there and check us out again next week hopefully next week if nothing comes up we're shooting for next week and we will have another episode of 40 minutes in the Old Testament we will see you guys later

© transcript Emily Beynon